Gougères – French Cheese Puffs
1 March 2010
Gougères – French Cheese Puffs
Gougères are classic French cheese puffs made with choux pastry and grated cheese (Gruyère / Comté). French they may be but it was in Russia that I really took a liking to them.
I blame it on the French bakery Volkonsky‘s, which was in dangerous proximity to Katya’s Moscow appt. A small bakery / café selling delicious pastries, sandwiches, breads and coffee not to mention gougères.
It was a lesson in how something so innocent can be so addictive … I could have eaten them by the handful.
In memory of Volkonsky’s gougères, here is my recipe (see link Gougères below):
Gougères – French Cheese Puffs Recipe : ERIKA ALLISTON – Sweet Pea Blog
- 250 mL cold water
- 75 gr unsalted butter (in small cubes)
- 3 pinches salt
- 150 gr white flour (sifted)
- 4 eggs
- 80 gr Gruyère cheese (finely grated)
- grated nutmeg to taste
Chou Pastry – Method:
- Place water, butter & salt in a sauce pan. Heat till just boiling.
- Remove from heat.
- Add flour all at once. Using a wooden spoon, stir vigorously untill a smooth dough forms (see photo)
- Let cool for 5 minutes.
- Add 1 egg, mix well. Don’t panic, it will take a few minutes of vigorous stirring for the egg to fully mix in. At the beginning the dough will separate and look lumpy, just keep stirring!
- Repeat step 5 for remaining three eggs, adding them one by one.
- Now fold in the grated cheese & nutmeg.
Baking – Method:
- Pre-heat oven to 200°C (normal not convection heat)
- Using a teaspoon, place generous dollops of dough on a lined baking sheet (see photo), leaving 2cm / 1 inch between them. *
- Bake for 18-20 minutes.
- Let cook and serve immediately. You can keep and reheat the gougères but they will lose their perfect consistency
NOTE : other recipes suggest chilling the dough before baking ie. 30-60 minutes in the fridge. I tired this and felt that it didn’t make a large difference, except that when cooked my gougères were slightly paler in colour and softer in texture.
2 March 2010 at 12:24 am
Those cream puffs look delicious…Great photos too!
2 March 2010 at 4:56 pm
I learned these in cooking school. Great stuff!
2 March 2010 at 5:14 pm
Hi Ed,
thanks. I have tried making them before but the choux dough was a little too thin, so while the taste was there the puffs didn’t hold their shape well.
I didn’t have that problem this time.
Did you learn how to make macarons in cooking school, if yes any suggestions ie) aging egg whites?
Erika